Could snorts inform us on how horses perceive riding?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2020.104041Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Snorts production is related to riding technique.

  • Snorts are associated to phases when the rider technique (long, loose reins) allow more comfort for the horse (low neck), especially while walking.

  • Snorts could be useful tools for identifying better practices at work.

Abstract

Several previous studies have shown that working conditions (including riding) can induce stress in horses. Riders’ actions and postures, when inappropriate, induce stress and conflict behaviours during riding and welfare impairment and negative emotional states outside work. Optimistic biases have been found in leisure horses, which, amongst positive management factors, were ridden with loose reins and low hands. Thus, one can wonder whether horses may positively perceive work or parts of it. Indicators of positive emotions are poorly known yet but we recently found that, out of the working context, a non-vocal acoustic signal, snorts, could reflect mild positive emotions in horses. We hypothesized that snorts could help identifying the working phases and actions appreciated by horses. An overview of snort production in 127 horses spread over 16 riding schools was first conducted to highlight a potential site effect. Results show a great difference in snorts frequency between facilities which may be due to different riding techniques. In order to test this hypothesis, we then focused on 37 horse-rider dyads by scoring horses’ postures (neck) and riders’ positions (hand, reins) during, but also out of the context of snort production. Results show that snorts were particularly associated with phases when the rider technique, i.e. long and loose reins, allowed more comfort for the horse, especially while walking. Results were more mitigated for higher paces since the association of snorts with signs of comfort was less clear-cut. Snorts could therefore be useful tools for identifying better practices, especially at slower gaits. However, care has to be taken at higher paces.

Introduction

How animals perceive work remains under debate probably as many work-related factors are at stake. For instance, work-related stress may emerge in working dogs, either because of the type of activity (e.g. animal-assisted activities: Haubenhofer and Kirchengast, 2006), the type of reinforcement used (e.g. Haverbeke et al., 2008; Hiby et al., 2004) or the associated physical constraints (Rooney et al., 2016). In horses, the impact of work, and especially riding, has long been underestimated (Ödberg and Bouissou, 1999), but it is well established now that riding can be a source of acute stress for horses (McGreevy and McLean, 2005), so that the sight of work-related objects such as saddles may lead to negative reactions (Fureix et al., 2009). Several studies using preference tests demonstrated that horses did not show strong motivation for exercise performed under constraining conditions (Górecka-Bruzda et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2011), and could even perceive riding as uncomfortable (König von Borstel and Keil, 2012). In a study on jumping horses, Górecka-Bruzda et al. (2011) found that the motivation to jump, even small fences, decreased rapidly with higher effort, concluding that this exercise was emotionally costly for the horse. Moreover, riders’ techniques, positions and skills do impact the mental and physical welfare of horses (Lesimple et al., 2010; Lovett et al., 2005; Ödberg and Bouissou, 1999) and lead when inappropriate to the display of stress behaviours (“conflict behaviours”) by the horses (Górecka-Bruzda et al., 2015; Hall and Heleski, 2017; von Borstel et al., 2009; Williams and Warren-Smith, 2010), as well as postural (e.g. ears backwards: von Borstel et al., 2009; Ludewig et al., 2013) and physiological changes (for a review: König von Borstel et al., 2017). Thus, elevated head/neck postures and ears backwards reflect discomfort at work (e.g. Greve and Dyson, 2013, 2014; Quick and Warren-Smith, 2009; Waldern et al., 2009). Excessive rein tension appears to have a particular impact on horses’ emotional and physical state since a too harsh and unnecessary use of bits by novice riders may lead to serious injuries in the mouth, a particularly sensitive part of the horse’s anatomy (Cook, 2003; Mata et al., 2015). Indeed, several authors underlined the aversive aspect of rein tension (e.g. Christensen et al., 2011), and more generally different kinds of tension-eliciting equipment (Clayton et al., 2011; McLean and McGreevy, 2010; Murphy, 2009) which may lead to “conflict behaviours” such as head tossing or reefing reins (i.e. pulling them strongly from the rider’s hands) (e.g. König von Borstel and Glißman, 2014; McGreevy and McLean, 2005; Pickles et al., 2014; von Borstel et al., 2009). Moreover, shortening of the reins has been associated with vigorous tail switching and flattened backwards ears in the horse (Ludewig et al., 2013). Horses also try to avoid pain in the mouth by raising the head and neck, which leads to a characteristic posture where the neck becomes flat or hollow (Cook, 2003; Jeffcott, 1979). The repetition of these avoidance behaviours (i.e. head rising, head tossing) may lead to back problems and chronic, behavioural or postural modifications (e.g. Hausberger et al., 2009; Lesimple et al., 2010). In studies on leisure and riding school horses, Fureix et al. (2011) and Lesimple et al. (2013) showed that these two categories of horses differed greatly in terms of back/neck shape, with more roundness in the leisure horses, that, beyond living in a more appropriate environment, were also ridden with loose reins and low hands. Interestingly, when confronted with cognitive bias tasks, the leisure horses appeared more optimistic than the instruction horses (Henry et al., 2017). Similarly, considering that horses trained with positive reinforcement are positive towards the task and the trainer (Sankey et al., 2010a, 2010b), one can wonder whether horses may learn to appreciate work, and in this case, whether there are particular moments that they would appreciate more. Lesimple et al. (2016a, 2016b, 2010) showed that the time spent by beginners with high hands was correlated with that spent by the horse with a high neck and consequently led to more back disorders. This means that such times are probably negative experiences for the horse.

The teacher’s strategy played a major role in determining the attention beginning riders payed to their position and actions, leading to strong discrepancies in the riding techniques observed and the horse’s spine state between riding schools Lesimple et al. (2016a, 2016b, 2010). This also means that some strategies for teaching and riding may be perceived as better by the horse. However, indicators of positive emotions in a riding context are still scarce to date. Yet, promoting positive emotions during learning has been shown to reduce problematic defence behaviours during training (e.g. biting or kicking) and consequently the risks of accidents, in comparison to some training methods that may induce discomfort or stress (e.g. von Borstel et al., 2009). Thus, it becomes really necessary to identify these positive situations in order to be able to assess how the horses perceive the situation and consequently promote favourable practices.

We recently found that, outside the working context, snorts (more or less pulsed sounds resulting from the expulsion of the air through the nostrils), when not related to any respiratory issue, could reflect mild positive emotions in horses since they are produced more often in a context that favours the expression of a positive internal state (e.g. pasturing in groups) and occurred more often in horses in a good welfare state (Stomp et al., 2018b). Interestingly, one study found that snort production was negatively correlated to rein tensions in dressage horses (König von Borstel and Glißman, 2014), while another reported that snorts were heard frequently after improvement in lameness suggesting a potential sign of relaxation (Dyson et al., 2018). We hypothesized therefore that snorts could, as observed in other contexts, help identify the working phases and actions that horses could appreciate most. In order to test this hypothesis, we recorded snorts during beginners riding lessons in different riding schools and investigated their context of production both in terms of the phase of work (halt, walk, other) but also of riders’ position and horses’ posture at the precise time of the production. In the light of the abovementioned studies, a special emphasis was given to the reins’ length and tension as well as hands’ height for the rider and the neck’s height for the horse. We expected that more snorts would be produced during relaxed walk, associated with a low neck position for the horse as well as low hands and long and loose reins for the riders and that potentially this could be less clear-cut at higher paces, where beginners have more difficulties keeping balance and hence more chances to have inappropriate hand actions. The study is divided into two parts, one aiming at considering potential differences between riding schools (16 schools, 127 horses) in the amount of snorts, as it was shown earlier that riding techniques/pedagogy differs between schools, the second (on a subset of 37 horses) relating snort production to riders’ characteristics.

Section snippets

Ethical note

Experiments were conducted in accordance to the European directive 2010/63/UE relative to the protection of animals used for scientific purposes and complied with the current French laws related to animal experimentation (decree n°2013-118 of 1 February 2013 and its five implementation orders (JO of 7 February 2013), integrated in the Code rural and the Code of the maritime fishing under n° R. 214-87 à R.214-137). Animal husbandry and care were under management of the riding schools’ staff, as

Overview of snort production, comparison between schools

In total 717 snorts were recorded over the 15.5 h of riding lessons analysed and clear differences appeared between the 16 sites studied with more snorts heard in some riding schools than in others (i.e. from 2.6–14.8 snorts per hour per horse, X = 6.3 ± 3.8, Table 1).

Riding context of snort production (see Table 2)

In total, there were only 71 occurrences for which the emitter and its rider were visible while a snort was produced (N = 37 horse-rider pairs; from 1 to 11 snorts per horse, X = 1.8 ± 1.8) and the number of horses involved

Discussion

This study investigated for the first time horses’ snorts production during riding in relation with riders’ and horses’ characteristics at the time of production. The results revealed that 1) snorts frequency varied between facilities, 2) most of all, they were particularly produced in a more relaxed context (long, loose reins, low neck posture), especially during the walking parts of the session.

The frequency of snorts varied largely between the different riding schools during riding lessons,

CRediT authorship contribution statement

M. Stomp: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. A. Masson: Formal analysis, Investigation. S. Henry: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing - review & editing. M. Hausberger: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Resources,

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the directors of the riding schools for allowing us to work and the staff for their help with their horses. We also wish to thank the “Institut Français du Cheval et de l’Equitation”, the “Fonds Eperon”, and the CCMSA (Caisse Centrale de la Mutualité Sociale Agricole) for their financial support. We are also grateful to C. Dufour for her help on behavioural recordings.

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